Wish I was in Venice

Check out this article about Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/arts/design/04icel.html?_r=1&ref=design

Anselm Kiefer

I really like this guy, Anselm Kiefer's work, as do many others because he is super famous. I'm not sure about the bit with the stacked concrete cubes though. Humm... again, what is art?

Amateur or Professional?

Hello Everyone
I am teaching my first class of the summer tonight and I thought that I would re-post this bit that I wrote at the beginning of last semester as I think it is still relevant. Enjoy!

As some of you may know I teach a couple of illustration and design classes at ACC. Today I had my favorite class, illustration, and only a few of the students showed up. Seems things have become hard and it is easier to stay home than come to class and face the work. I read a book once called "the war of art", where the author (can't remember his name) said that the difference between a professional and an amateur is that the professional shows up no matter what. Professionals are at their work even if they feel crappy, uninspired and uncreative. The amateur thinks about working but never actually does anything. When making art it is important to designate a time to work every day and stick to it. Even if it's just standing in front of your easel (or computer) and making random marks. Something will happen. If you think the thoughts of how hard the work is or if it wouldn't be nicer to go watch TV, or even worse you go watch TV, then you have robbed yourself of the chance for the universe to help with your work. Beware of distractions! TV, video games, drinking, the list goes on and it will divert you from the creative path. So back to my class. The ones that are here today are working hard. The ones that are not here are not working hard on their projects. Period. Amateur or professional?

ps I added a cool photo of an Emigre cover by uber illustrator Henrik Drescher because we all need something fab to look at!

Curious Room Site Redesign in Progress

Hi All,
A quick note that the Curiousroom.com site is currently undergoing a complete site redesign. Even though the current site is visually eye catching it needs some updating in terms of back end streamlining and ease of database use. We will be merging this blog into the new homepage and making the site more interactive and aiming to drive more traffic to the site using the latest web optimization techniques. Not sure when it will be done (soon I hope) but keep an eye out.
Cheers

Frozen Art

Hi Everyone,
I have always been in awe of the ice hotel in Sweden. I love the idea of making something beautiful that lasts for only a short time, then melts back into the earth. Disposable art. Impermanent art. Precious art. I think we as humans try to preserve almost everything, old paintings, buildings, our bodies and emotions, are some examples. This may be a subconscious need to combat change. Or perhaps a need to resist the fear of change. I had some steel chairs made from some of my designs and they, like a lot of my art, take up space in my house. So I put one out in the yard and it started to rust. No surprise here but what did surprise me was peoples reaction. "How can you let that beautiful chair rust?", perplexed people would ask. I found that it was peoples reaction that had become the art. Their fear of things falling apart that reminds them of humans rush to unavoidable death. We become so attached to "stuff" that we forget that objects are not that important really. We spend huge amounts of time and energy keeping artifacts from rotting away to dust instead of creating new work. I love to watch cooking shows. Partly this is because it is fascinating to see a chief create a beautiful dish with the purpose of having it destroyed (eaten). Performance art? So my advice is to make something you love, art, food, whatever. Then give it away, eat it, let it rot or destroy it. The feeling of liberation is amazing. Anyway, the ice hotel, at least from the photos I have seen, is a wonderful place that I have on my list to visit someday, along with Iceland, the Nile river and Japan.
Ice hotel: http://www.icehotel.com/ and my chairs that become rusty with time: curvy chair
cheers
(It's hot here - is it fall yet?)

Uber cool art from Janet Reeves

Hi everyone
So one of my ex students is doing some very cool work. Kinda a hybrid between fine art and illustration (is there a difference?) check out her site here: www.janet-reeves.com.

This Twitter Thing

Ok, so I am rather a newbie at this whole social media stuff and I have been trying to figure out, like everyone else, how to use social media to promote the curiousroom.com site and get more people to view (and buy) the artwork for sale. This leads me to twitter. At first I was unsure about it but signed up because people kept inviting me to to join it. ( by the way: http://twitter.com/larrygoode) One of my friends was curious (pun intended indeed) why I would want to use twitter to keep up with friends when you can only use two lines of copy. I informed my buddy that it's real use is for networking, getting new clients, and keeping existing clients informed and frankly, remembering that you exist. A good friend of mine, John McElhenney, http://uber.la is a social media guru and gave me tons of good info that can, hopefully, help with my art sales. Anyway, from time to time I will be writing about my journey through the social media vortex and my assesment on it's usefulness for us artists and creative types.
Cheers
Larry

Happiness

I was thinking of doing a series of portraits of famous people. So I started with the Dalai Lama. And here he is!!
I've been thinking of happiness recently, with the economic downturn and all, and I have come to the conclusion that I am not my work. For many years my happiness seemed to depend on how many projects I had going and how much money I was making. This is a hard thing to maintain year after year through good and bad times and eventually becomes a boat anchor around our necks. I think it is important to shift with the times and not let the boat anchor keeps us mired in the mud of the past. When I get down because all my marketing efforts come to naught, I try to remember that I am alive and healthy (sort of) and there is much beauty in the world. I just finished a book called 2666 by Roberto Bolano. A brilliant book indeed and it made me happy that there is such skilled art of staggering beauty that I have access to. Is that not a gift? I once was taking a print making class in Florence and in the class was a woman who created very beautiful prints. She would say out loud that everything was a gift. When she created a brilliant piece it was a gift, when the piece was a disaster she would laugh and say it was a gift. When the attendant failed to show up one day to unlock the studio she said it was a gift and now she could go shopping! I had never seen such happiness and it rubbed off on the rest of the class. Our quality of work soared with the positive energy. Now I don't particularly think of myself as a positive happy person who spreads joy, but I feel something shifting in the world for the better. I hold on to that and look for the gifts that come from inside and outside my work.

cheers
Larry

The baboon knows what you're doing!

I decided to create a series of animal illustrations.... Here is a baboon for no particular reason.